


Asynchronous

by ebjameston



Series: Soulminutes AU [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Background Kent Parson/Alexei Mashkov, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of Consensual Underage Sex, Mentions of Real Hockey Players, Minor Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Mutual Pining, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 10:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19060381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebjameston/pseuds/ebjameston
Summary: The theory is that soulminutes show you the information you need to find your soulmate.At this rate, Jack’ll probably be seeing his soulmate’s passport within the next few years. He’s already got a first name (Richard, because Google spit out a definitive answer about this horrible "Dicky" nickname situation), an age, a general region of the world, and clear pictures of both of his soulmate’s parents. He’s a figure skater, his father is a football coach.Jack could probably find him, if Jack had any intention at all of ever finding his soulmate. Which he doesn’t.+++[A soulmate AU in which once a year, on your birthday, you see through your soulmate's eyes for exactly sixty seconds. Jack and Bitty somehow manage to make it a long, long road.]





	Asynchronous

**Author's Note:**

> ...and we're back! Welcome to the first installment of the Zimbits side of this little soulmate AU. I think(??) that this probably works as a standalone, but I'm too close to my own canon to know if this makes any sense without having read Minute by Minute first, so probably start there if you're new here. 
> 
> Updates for this will be slower than they were for Minute by Minute, so apologies in advance - these guys' voices don't come to me as easily as Kent's and Alexei's. 
> 
> Please be sure to heed the tags! All the Minute by Minute warnings still apply, and I'm adding Implied/Referenced Drug Use since we get into Jack's head a bit more here. Implied/Referenced Homophobia's going to be a bit of a theme throughout the story. Implied/Referenced Child Abuse comes from the stuff with Kent's dad as established in Minute by Minute, and Mentions of Consensual Underage Sex here refers to Jack and Kent's relationship while they were in the Q.

**[ERIC, 11]**

 

Eric doesn’t need a soulminute to know that he’s different.   

He's been different for as long as he can remember. He likes figure skating and baking and he thinks football is dumb, and all of that is just far enough from what boys are supposed to be like that he’s been getting sidelong glances since before he got tall enough to see over countertops. He’s tried to talk to his mama about it a couple times, but she always just says that he’s too young to know and _Gracious, Dicky, we’ve got so much to get done before the ladies get here for the Steeplechase party, will this keep until tomorrow?_

He knows that he’s young, but he’s old enough to know that he’s not interested in girls the way the other boys at school are starting to be. And he knows that most soulmatches aren’t romantic when one of the partners is as young as he is, but it’s not like he wants romance right now anyhow — gross. He’s _eleven_.

Eric Richard Bittle doesn’t need a soulmate to know who he is. 

(But it would’ve been nice to have a soulminute on the first birthday he was old enough. All it means that he didn’t is that his soulmate is younger than him, he gets that, but. Still. Would’ve been nice to know that somewhere, out there in the world, there’s someone who’ll understand him.)

 

**[JACK, 16]**

Jack is so used to not having soulminutes that landing in his soulmate’s head for the first time knocks his skates clean out from underneath him. He’s got the rink to himself, at least, so no one’s around to see it, but these hours on the ice alone were his birthday present and he has just enough time to be annoyed that he’s wasting a minute on something that isn’t hockey before his brain goes _Calice, it’s hot here_. 

It is _sweltering_ where his soulmate is, the type of heat that doesn’t happen in Montréal. It’s humid in a way Jack’s never experienced before, and he can still kinda feel the ice through his pads but it’s mostly drowned out by his soulmate’s clothes sticking to his skin. 

His. _His_ skin. 

Jack’s soulmate is a boy. 

And that, 

well.

  

 

Other things happen while Jack is panicking through the rest of the soulminute. He’s too shocked to pick up on many of the details, but he retains enough to piece together the sort of lazy weekend afternoon that he’s heard his teammates talk about. Jack’s soulmate was at a beach — not the ocean, he doesn’t think, but maybe a lake or a big river. There were other people around, and someone was playing the sort of twangy guitar Jack associates with American country music (Duncan Lewis started spending summers with his mom in Texas a few years ago and keeps insisting that Rascal Flatts is appropriate for the locker room). Other things happen, and Jack gets happy-content-sleepy from his soulmate, which is nice, but. 

But. 

Jack is going to play in the NHL. Jack cannot — _cannot_ — be gay. It’s bad enough that Kenny’s soulmate is a guy and they’re going to have to hide that for forever, so Jack’s got to keep that secret while trying to help Kent improve his hockey because all those years he spent on sub-par teams with coaches who didn’t know what to do with him didn’t do him any favors. Jack can’t be gay. He’s not supposed to be. He’s not _allowed_ to be.

He’s Bob Zimmermann’s son. 

 

**[ERIC, 12]**

“Okay, universe,” Eric says. He runs his hands blindly over the walls by the door, wincing when his palms snag on something sticky. “Now would be a great time for a soulminute. Because I have to say, this is a pretty crappy birthday so far.” 

He finally finds a light switch and flicks it on, and the fluorescent bulb flickers a harsh, sickly-yellow glow over the shelves and equipment all around him. He doesn’t know what half the stuff in here does or what’s safe to touch, but he finds a stack of ancient geometry textbooks and figures they’re better than sitting on the floor. 

He’s missing practice, and he wonders how long it will take for someone to notice he’s not there. Everyone will probably just think that he’s taking the day off for his birthday, and Catherine will tell her mama that he doesn’t need a ride home because he wasn’t at practice, and his mama probably won’t think anything of it until it’s a few minutes past seven and Eric isn’t home to help with dinner, and that’s _three and a half hours from now_. 

He’s not scared of the dark, because he’s twelve and that would be silly, but he’s not thrilled about hanging out in a dirty, creepy utility closet until his parents realize that he’s not where he’s supposed to be. And it’s a Friday, what if they think he’s just over at Billy’s or Josette’s? What if no one comes looking for him until, until _morning_? 

Reverend Michaels says that you’re not supposed to hate anyone, but Eric thinks God might give him a one-time pass to hate the football team for this. Just for a little while. 

“On the plus side,” he says, embarrassed when his voice shakes even though he’s the only one around to hear it, “I bet Mama will let me get a cell phone after this.” 

 

 

(He doesn't have a soulminute, and he decides that he's glad. He doesn't want the memory of the first time he sees through his soulmate's eyes to have anything to do with the memory of this night.)

 

 

**[JACK, 17]**

Summer seems pointless without Kent. 

There’s some hockey, at least, but it’s mostly street games and conditioning and waiting for it to be September so Kent can come back and the new season can start. They were good last year, really good, the kind of good that makes Jack feel like he might actually live up to being Bad Bob’s son if he stays focused, but it’s hard to stay focused on hockey when sometimes all Jack can think about is getting Kent back in his bed. Or on the couch, or against the wall, or in a side hallway at the arena. 

When Jack’s hands are on Kent, he can — just for a minute — forget that there are a million people just waiting to see him fail outside these walls. He can forget that most of Canada recognizes him if he goes to the grocery story, he can forget the awkward half-conversations he and Sidney Crosby have at Uncle Mario’s and his dad's insistence, he can forget that he’s probably going to end up shouldering the hopes of a failing franchise in some US city he’s never been to. 

Hockey is Kent and Kent is hockey, and Jack wants both so badly that he can barely breathe with it sometimes, and he’s starting to realize that he can’t survive one if he doesn’t have the other anyway, so it just needs to be September already so Kenny and hockey can come back, and — 

Jack’s soulmate is sitting in a car in a parking lot, staring at a brick building that looks like a school. Kids — a couple years younger than Jack, he thinks — are trickling in and out of the doors, trailed by parents clutching folders. 

“Are you ready to go in, Dicky?” 

Jack’s soulmate is _not_ ready to go inside. Decidedly not. His head is a swirl of nervous-worry-fear and it’s enough to make Jack’s stomach turn. 

“Maybe try a little harder to fit in here,” the woman in the driver’s seat continues, and Jack’s soulmate — Dicky, apparently, which just seems cruel — flares. It’s too fast and too much for Jack to track, but he gets anger-pride-resentment-defiance, and then he sets his jaw. 

“I do not need to _fit in_ , Mama,” Dicky says. “They need to be less judgmental. It’s the twenty-first century.” 

His voice rolls over Jack like honey. Smooth, lilting, drawn-out vowels, higher-pitched that Jack ever remembers his own voice being — how old is this kid, anyway? He’s smaller than Jack by a long shot, Jack can feel it when he shifts against the seatbelt. 

The woman, Jack’s soulmate’s mother, offers a tiny, sad smile. “I don’t want you to get hurt, sweetheart.” 

“Mama, we would’ve had to move to Sweden for that to be realistic. They’re going to hate me here, just like they did back home.” 

“We came here to start over,” she insists. 

“We came here because Coach got a better job. It’s an added bonus that no one here knows anything about me yet, but they’re going to know soon enough. Look at me, Mama.” 

“And all I’m saying is you could try harder to fit in.” 

Jack’s soulmate is quiet for a few loud heartbeats, then, “What if I don’t want to fit in here?” 

She tilts her head. “What d’you mean?” 

“You’ve seen how they treat anyone different,” Dicky says. “What happened to me, and to Sarabeth, and to Billy, and what’s probably still happening to Billy because I got to run away and he didn’t. To May and Jackson. Why would I want to fit in to that?” 

“There are plenty of perfectly kind people —.” 

“Plenty of perfectly kind people who don’t bat an eye when unkind people do things that, that. That shouldn’t be done.” 

She takes a few heavy breaths, staring at the steering wheel, and her eyes are damp with tears when she looks back at Jack’s soulmate. “I just want you to be safe.” 

“Pretending to be something I’m not doesn’t make me safe,” Dicky says. “It makes me a liar.”

Jack’s mother calls up the stairs, asking if Jack’s dressed to go out for his birthday dinner yet. He’s not, but he goes through the motions on autopilot. He thinks about his soulmate and Kent and hockey, and parts of the world where he’d lose a lot more than hockey if anyone found out about his soulmate, and how lucky he and Kent are that no one’s going to look at either of them and assume they’re anything but straight. 

He thinks about bravery. 

 

**[JACK & KENT, BETWEEN]**

“Calm down. I’ll be back in no time.” 

“You heard the doctors. 6-8 weeks. At least.” 

“They’re exaggerating. It’s not that bad. I haven’t thrown up yet today.” 

“6-8 weeks. Might as well be the whole rest of the season.” 

“I’m sorry, Zimms.” 

“If you’d been keeping your head up —.” 

“Forgive me for focusing on the puck instead of —.” 

“That’s not what I. Stop. Just. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to —.” 

“It’s fine. Did someone call my mom? Have I asked that already?” 

“Yesterday, and again today. She’s not. Uh. I ended up talking to Katie for a few minutes. She’s pretty worried.” 

“Oh. So, my mom…”  

“Yeah.” 

“Okay. Shit. Okay. Well. There’s always next season, huh?” 

“Mm.” 

“Zimms. Jack. There’s next season. We’ll be fine.” 

“Yeah. I just. Yeah.” 

  

**[ERIC, 13]**

“Terrible,” Katya snaps for the seventh time in ten minutes. “Again.” 

Eric grits his teeth and shakes out his leg, skating a wide loop to recover from his seventh failed attempt at a double Lutz. Why did he think this was a good idea? Why did he want to spend his birthday auditioning to train with Katya Morozova? What sane person puts themselves through this? 

He takes another lap, trying to ease into the calm, centered headspace he needs. Only Mama and Katya are watching, but he feels the weight of each eye like he’s wearing a lead vest, and he knows before he’s even fully shifted his weight into his launching leg that he’s going to crash again. 

_Brace-lean-arms-pick-rotate-_

_-crash._

It knocks the wind out of him, as it always does, and he stays down until he hears Katya’s “Again” called across the ice, and he just — 

“No,” he says quietly, just to himself. Then, louder, getting back on his feet, “No.” 

He skates back to Katya furious, anger bleeding into every stride. “No. Not _again_. Not again until you actually help me fix it.” 

Amusement is written all over her features. “Is that why you here? So I can fix? Thought here to impress.” 

“I am _twelve_ ,” Eric practically shouts. “Thirteen! I’m thirteen, I can’t impress you! You’re supposed to be a coach! I’m here so you can coach me! So…coach me!!” 

Katya, for the first time since Eric set foot on the ice, looks interested in what’s going on. “All right. Lutz is counter-rotated, yes?” 

“…yes,” Eric says, wary. 

“So why you swing arms exact same as other jump, with normal rotation?” 

Eric blinks. “I’m not. I mean…am I?” 

Katya pushes away from the wall and goes through a jump prep that Eric recognizes as his own, down to exact matching footwork. Katya freezes in the instant right before take off, right arm extended out and up at an angle. “You see this? Arm here? This for loop. Is for outside edge jump, is good, but not for counter-rotate.” She adjusts her arm back and further up, then reverses the motion and replays it several times, letting Eric see the shift it produces through her entire body. “You see?” 

Eric blows out a breath and nods, mimicking the change. It feels weird in his shoulder as he dry-runs through it a few times, getting used to the longer throw of his arm and how it changes the timing of everything else. Skating — and baking, and most everything else Eric likes — is a series of tiny modifications that can have big impact, and he lets it settle into his body before taking a serious run-up. 

_Brace-lean-arms-ARMS-pick-rotate-_

_-crash._  

He uses the few seconds after he hits the ice to check himself over and replay the crash, and he knows — he _knows_ — this one was different. He could feel his landing edge catch properly, it did, he just didn’t brace for the increased momentum, and Katya’s head pops up over his. 

“Better,” she says. “This time, when land, rotate hips more. Follow through with jumping leg, yes?”

“Yes,” Eric says. He pushes himself to his feet. “Again?” 

She grins at him. “Again.” 

 

+++

 

“So, how’d it go?” 

“Your son hasn’t stopped babbling in excitement since we left the rink, that’s how it went,” Eric’s mama says with a laugh, dropping a kiss on Coach’s cheek as she passes through the living room. 

“Is that a good thing?” 

Eric presses a cup of mint chip ice cream into his father’s hand and dashes to the kitchen for a napkin — his own chocolate-vanilla swirl cone’s been dripping down his hand for five minutes. “It was amazing, Coach. Thank you so much.” 

His father hums appreciation. “Think she’s going to take you on?” 

Eric shrugs, trying not to let how much he wants this show. “She doesn’t have many spots open this year. But I think I did everything I could, and that’s all I can do, right?” 

Coach makes a noise of approval, either at the ice cream or Eric’s words or both. “We’ll just have to wait and see. I sure hope your soulmate likes ice skating, kid, since it seems like she’s going to be sitting through a lot of it.” 

Eric freezes, but for one it’s not at the casual assumption that his soulmate will be female. He glances at the big wall clock, made of a few pieces of the Jeffersons' barn that blew down in that storm a few years back. 

12:18AM. Another birthday gone, still no soulmate. 

…he might have an ice skating coach, though. 

 

**[JACK, 18]**

_Kent Parson @ 10:07AM: Happy bday_

_Kent Parson @ 3:40PM: Sorry_

 

Jack stares at the texts for longer than he’d like to admit. There are other messages, from guys on their Q team and kids from the neighborhood and his old billet families, and Kent’s the only person he hasn’t responded to. 

The problem — and this has _always_ been Jack’s problem — is that he remembers. He remembers how scared he was when Kent went down on the ice and didn’t immediately get back up, he remembers the helpless frustration at the end of the season, he remembers the disappointment in everyone’s eyes, he remembers the cold sneer on Kent’s face when he was packing to go back to New York for the summer. Kent used to be enough to make Jack forget for a little while, but now all Jack can do is remember, and it's too much to hold at once. 

(The pills are supposed to help with that. With this. With the sharpness of it all. They don’t, not really, not when the sun is setting on his birthday and he’s looking at a text from his…teammate? Friend? Ex-boyfriend? Friend-with-former-benefits? and he can’t figure out how to answer it, or even if he should answer it. He can still remember every bit of everything, and it feels like he’s lost something precious. Something stabilizing. The pills are supposed to _help_.)

“Would it really be so bad?” Asks a soft voice in his ear, and Jack jerks around in surprise but it wasn’t his ear at all. His soulmate’s mother looks at him across a kitchen table, well-worn with meals past but clean and obviously cared for. A man, probably Jack’s soulmate’s father, sits next to her. "Just until…” 

“Until what?” Jack’s soulmate prompts. His emotions rebound off Jack’s own until the tired-frustrated-anxious-determined is a dull roar thick in Jack's skull. “Until high school? Y’think it’s going to be better at a school where everyone wants to know why the football coach’s son isn’t on the team?” 

“You could be,” his father insists. This feels like an old argument, something they’ve hashed through a hundred times to no one’s satisfaction. “You could be a kicker, a punt returner with how fast you are —.” 

“I thought you wanted me to be _safe_ ,” Dicky says, sharp. “Now you want to put me on a football field, where I’ll always be half the size —.”

“You’ll grow,” his mother chimes in. “Men on my side of the family don’t hit growth spurts until 16, 17.”  

“And what if I don’t?” Dicky bursts. “Is everyone just going to keep hating me for all the things I can’t control?” 

“Do _not_ speak to your mother that way, young man,” his father thunders, fists clenched on the table, and Jack’s soulmate gets a little scared. Not the type of scared where he thinks he’s going to get hit — Jack’s been in fights and he’s heard Kent talk about his own dad, that’s not what’s happening here — but it’s disconcerting for Jack nonetheless. He’s been yelled at by his fair share of coaches, sure, but Jack’s father never raises his voice in anger. 

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Dicky says. “But I just — I can’t —.” 

“There are more college scholarships for hockey than for figure skating,” his soulmate’s mother interrupts, and Jack feels like he’s been boarded. His soulmate _skates_? 

Jack’s soulmate laughs, a touch wild. “We live in the South. And if _football’s_ too violent —.” 

“There’s a non-contact league at the rink on Greenway,” his father says. “High school juniors and seniors. The wrestling coach’s kid used to play.” 

“I don’t _like_ hockey,” Dicky insists. “I like figure skating!” 

“You’ve never tried hockey,” his mother counters. She stands up abruptly and starts clearing plates away. “It’s moot for two years, anyhow. We’ll discuss it again if it becomes a realistic option.”  

Jack blinks back into his parents’ basement, still staring at the unanswered texts.

The dominant theory is that soulmatches show you the information you need to find your soulmate when the time is right. People usually don’t get actual contact information for their soulmates unless they’ve missed opportunities to find each other earlier — you see it on the news sometimes, usually middle-aged people who got a glimpse of a driver’s license and suddenly the past 30 years of minutes made sense. At this rate, Jack’s soulmatch will probably be showing him his soulmate’s passport within the next few years. He’s got a first name (Richard, because Google spit out a definitive answer about this "Dicky" nickname situation), an age (soon to be a freshman in American high school, based on the “moot for two years” comment), a general region of the world, and clear pictures of both of his soulmate’s parents. He’s a figure skater, his father is a football coach.  

Jack could probably find him. If Jack had any intention at all of ever finding his soulmate. Which he doesn’t.  

 

_Kent Parson @ 8:56PM: I miss you_

_You @ 9:02PM: When do you come back? There are new plays we should work on._

  

**[ERIC, 14 + 1 DAY]**

“She’s at least three years younger than you, then?” Clara muses, checking her bun in the mirror and tacking another wayward curl into place with a bobby pin. 

“Must be, since I didn’t have a minute yesterday,” Eric says. He sets his heel on the barre and leans over it, trying to get his hip to loosen up before class starts. He wasn’t jazzed about the idea of taking ballet when Katya suggested it, but he has to admit that it’s helping with his flexibility and extensions.  “Or I’m minute-blind. Or unmatched.” 

“Oh, shut up.” Clara swats at his foot. “You’re not unmatched, don’t be an idiot. Less than, like, half of a half of a percent of people are unmatched.”  

“Statistically speaking —.” 

“Statistically speaking, my sweet ass,” Clara snarks, earning herself a scandalized look from Marlene and Sheryl. “What’d you do, spend all night watching inspirational talks about taking control of your own destiny?” 

“No. Maybe.” Eric switches to his other leg. “Just because you and Marcos found each other your second year of age and are disgustingly adorable pen pals doesn’t mean that everyone gets a perfect match. Or that everyone _needs_ a perfect match.” 

Clara cocks an eyebrow. “Oh, so now I _need_ a soulmate? Just got brainwashed into this by society?”  

Madame Dupont enters the room as Eric’s rolling his eyes, and everyone scrambles out of their legwarmers and sweaters to get in place for warm-ups. Eric and Clara settle into their customary spots on the outside of the second row. 

“What’d you end up getting for your birthday, anyway?” Clara whispers while the rest of the class falls into place around them.  

Eric feels a grin spread over his face. “That webcam I asked for! I’d still like a better microphone, but I did a couple tests last night and I think the audio quality’s good enough to get started. Want to come over after my practice Saturday and help me shoot the first video? I picked out the perfect recipe.” 

 

**[JACK & KENT, BETWEEN]**

"Do you think you'll like Vegas?" 

 

“Does anyone actually like Las Vegas?” 

“It’s got to have more than just casinos in real life. They wouldn’t have given them a hockey team if it was just casinos.” 

“I don’t care about the casinos. And I don’t have to like the city. I’ll be there to play hockey, not to be the mayor.” 

“I guess. Hey, didn’t you take two of those already today?” 

“I can take up to four a day.” 

“No, I know, it’s just. It’s not even noon?” 

“Don’t remember asking you to keep tabs on me.” 

“I’m not, Zimms, Jesus, but you had just as much to drink as me last night and I’m hungover as fuck right now. Can’t be good to mix that.” 

“You’re hungover because I’ve got thirty pounds on you and you don’t know when to stop.” 

“Fine. You know what? Fuck you. I’m just trying to help —.” 

“I don’t need your help —.” 

“—so that you don’t wind up in the ground instead of in the NHL—.” 

“You’re overreacting. Kent. _Kenny_. It’s fine, okay? I promise. I’ll stop. I promise.” 

 

**[JACK, 19]**

It’s easy to transfer the framework of Jack’s life from hockey to rehab. 

Jack’s days used to be defined by hockey — the next practice, when to eat a meal to be properly fueled for an upcoming game, when to go to bed so he’d get the right amount of sleep before a morning conditioning session. There was a schedule, designed by Jack’s parents and coaches and trainers, and Jack followed the schedule. 

The new schedule is designed by doctors and therapists, but it’s still a schedule, and Jack knows how to follow a schedule. He sits in rooms while people talk at him, he eats what people give him to eat, he takes pills that people tell him to take.  He’s been trained to take correction since he could walk, and while the therapists insist that that isn’t a healthy way to think about rehab, that’s what it is. Correction. 

Another thing hockey and rehab have in common is that time doesn’t pass day-over-day, week-over-week. It’s gone from game-over-game to session-over-session, weekends the same as weekdays, and Jack doesn’t even realize it’s his birthday until his parents show up to the facility to dinner, looking determined to be hopeful. 

They let Jack look at his phone for a few minutes before they leave. 

 

_Kent Parson @ 2:22PM: Happy Birthday, Zimms_

_Kent Parson @ 2:25PM: I miss you_

 

Jack carefully deletes the messages. His dad looks like he wants to say something, but he pockets the phone again without a word. 

 

+++

 

The clock flips over to 12:01AM on the day after Jack’s nineteenth birthday. 

He did not have a soulminute. 

It feels like failure.

  

**[ERIC, 15]**

Honestly, Eric's fifteenth birthday? It's amazing. 

It’s a Saturday, so he stays in bed until the sun’s too bright to let him keep dozing. Pancakes for breakfast, then it’s off to the rink for ice time with Katya. He’s still not landing the new combo cleanly, but he can tell he’s circling it, and even the complicated edge work drill he’s been struggling with for weeks feels a little more manageable. Home, lunch, nap, then Clara comes over to help with a new video (although Clara’s version of “helping” recently is really just her making faces at him from behind the camera), then Clara’s parents and little sister come over for dinner. It’s warm enough to sit out on the porch and watch the sun set, and Eric is happy. 

Bursting into his soulmate’s head and getting flooded with adrenaline is a shock in and of itself; finding himself unexpectedly in an ice rink, on skates, hurtling from one end of the ice to the other? 

Eric is not prepared for this.  

Eric’s soulmate is skating the type of drop-dead sprints that Katya only makes Eric do as punishment, except there’s no one else in the rink making his soulmate do them. The lights over the bleachers are dark, even most of the lights over the ice are dark, and the only noises other than the rink’s AC are coming from his soulmate: The _shick-shick-shick_ of his stride, the carefully controlled rhythm of his breathing, the pounding of his heart in his ears. 

His head is full of anger. Anger and helplessness, tinged with regret and…longing? 

His soulmate cuts to a sharp stop after a few more lengths of the rink and puts his hands on his knees to catch his breath. He’s in street clothes, which strikes Eric as odd, and when he glides over to the bench to grab a water bottle, the little half-wall hits at his waist. 

Which is at least six inches lower than Eric's used to it being. 

“Hey, you okay?” Clara asks, waving a hand in front of his face. “Kinda trailed off in the middle of a sentence.” 

Eric blinks a few times, the humidity in the air around him strangely noticeable after the recycled air of a rink. “I’m. I’m fine.” 

“Super convincing lie, bud.” 

Eric looks over his shoulder. Their parents are still inside, working their way through a second bottle of wine, and Melody’s curled up with a book at the other end of the porch. He lowers his voice. “Soulminute.” 

“What?!” Clara squeals, then seems to pick up on Eric’s mood and looks around furtively before whispering, “What did you see?” 

“Not much. But they. Uh. I don’t think they’re younger than me?” 

Clara frowns. “What do you mean? Isn’t this your first minute?” 

“Yes,” Eric says slowly. “But. They’re. Taller than me? By, like, a lot.” 

“I hate to be the one to break this to you,” Clara says, “but a lot of people are taller than you. It’s not exactly a high bar. Pun intended.” 

“Right, no, I get that,” Eric says, aware that he’s weirding Clara out by not responding to her sarcasm. He’s not sure how to explain the strength he felt in his soulmate’s legs and core without letting on that his soulmate’s a guy — not that Clara would care, he’s pretty sure, but it’s a door he doesn’t want to open regardless. “At least half a foot taller than me, though. What eleven-year-old is six feet tall?”  

Clara hums a thinking noise and sits back in her chair. “Asynchronous, maybe?”  

Eric heaves a sigh. It’s dramatic but he can’t help it — an asynchronous soulmatch, _really_? It’s rare and no one really likes talking about it, because what it usually means is that someone experienced a significant enough trauma that their soulmatch had to recalculate. If Eric’s match is asynchronous, if his soulmate is Eric’s own age or older, it probably means that he went through something awful in the past year and it changed him. It means that he wasn’t Eric’s soulmate before, but something awful happened and it's made him different, and _now_ he’s Eric’s soulmate. 

Might explain the anger and helplessness, actually. 

“If my match is async,” Eric says slowly. “Do you think that means that I caused something terrible to happen? If I didn’t have a soulmate before, but the universe wanted me to end up with someone and the only way to make that happen was for that person to change, did I —.”  

 

“Eric Richard Bittle,” Clara says, taking his face in both hands and forcing him to look at her. “Awful shit happens every day. If your soulmatch is asynchronous, if your soulmate’s been through something horrible, that’s not on you. But you are going to love that person so fiercely and give them so much of yourself that I can absolutely fucking guarantee that one day, your soulmate is going to realize that all the crap they’ve been through was worth it to be loved by you.” 

“Good speech,” Eric says, face still squashed between Clara’s palms. “Write it yourself?” 

“Saw it in a movie.” She stands up and stretches. “C’mon, I want pie.” 

Eric jerks a thumb at the kitchen. “There’s two types of pie inside.”  

“I want cherry rhubarb pie.” 

He squints at her. “You can’t distract me with baking.”

She grins. “I totally can.” 

  


End file.
